JFK - Back When Conspiracy Theories Were Fun

I find myself watching JFK (or at least the beginning hour or so as I go to sleep at night) once a month because it’s almost always on a streaming service I have (currently on HBO Max). Each time I watch it, I plan on watching Nixon soon after, but rarely get around to it, as Nixon is almost never on a streaming service. And because of my idiotic principles, I refuse to rent it or buy it on digital because I already own it on DVD…and the basic premise of this site concerns movies I physically own, so I finally got the DVD out and watched Nixon the old fashioned way. But first, some thoughts on conspiracy culture and JFK.

Back When Conspiracy Theories Were Fun

JFK had a huge effect on me when I first watched it. I already fancied myself a history buff and was proud of my knowledge of the era. My stupid high school mind was not ready for the all out attack of this film. I became obsessed with the JFK assassination which resulted in reading a few books and writing way too many essays on it once I got to college. 

At the time, I just wanted to believe every bit of Oliver Stone’s conspiracy fever dream. I wanted to know who those hoboes were that were arrested by the train station. Who killed Lee Bowers? How many fake Oswalds were there? Did Clay Shaw really admit to being Clay Bertrand? Was X a real person? And on and on and on.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve calmed down, though I still think that head shot came from the front. But I’m no longer making people look at fucked up pictures of David Ferrie like I did to my intro to speech class in college…definitely got a few bewildered looks that day. 

I still want to believe everything in the Stone movie, but common sense (and light research) show that a lot of it is pure fiction/fantasy. JFK is a perfect example of how a conspiracy can scratch an itch you didn’t even know you had. 

Take an accepted historical event or common fact, present the unknown “truth” behind it, follow that rabbit hole to the center of the fucking planet. It’s very satisfying. Watching JFK the first time, I felt like part of some secret club finding out all kinds of cool secret shit the CIA never wanted me to know. But just being aware of the “truth” isn’t enough. Then I had to read some books so I could throw out some extra facts that weren’t in the movie to prove I was more in the know than your basic conspiracy theorist. Eventually, though, I had to accept that there isn’t “truth” out there, only belief. And that’s when this shit gets scary.

I finally accepted that there will never be the evidence I need to prove exactly what happened on that day. The closest thing I’ll ever get to that is suspending my disbelief and rewatching JFK, which is exactly why I’ve watched it so many times. This is when conspiracy theories were fun and mostly harmless. But at some point, the conspiracies got crazier and the facts were even more ignored, and it became dangerously close to becoming mainstream. 

People would often give me weird looks when I would go deep on the JFK stuff while we were hanging out, and rightfully so. I was being a fucking weirdo about something that didn’t really matter and could never be proven. But now, mainly thanks to the internet, instead of ranting and raving at sane people who will eventually calm you down (hopefully), now all the conspiracy theorists find an online echo chamber and things get too dark. 

It’s as if being a conspiracy theorist went from being a hobby to a deranged profession. JFK didn’t necessarily create this problem, but it’s tied into it by bringing a major conspiracy theory into pop culture. I feel like this is one of the most acceptable conspiracy theories out there thanks to this film. 

These days, I watch JFK for entertainment purposes and as a cautionary tale for going too deep into a theory. The cast is insane; you have guys like John Candy and Vincent D’Onofrio showing up for just a few moments. It’s hard to find a scene that doesn’t have a recognizable actor in it. And most of them are fucking going for it. Kevin Bacon talking shit to Kevin Costner is a standout moment, and Joe Pesci deserved an Oscar nom just for how he smoked during his first scene with Costner. For a three hour movie that has a dozen plot threads and red herrings, JFK never drags and is always entertaining thanks to Stone’s frenetic style and the aforementioned cast. 

Because of those elements, I can turn my brain off and enjoy it all. When I want to engage with the film a bit more, these days I focus on Costner’s home life in the film. The first few times I watched it (before I had a family of my own, by the way), I wrote off Sissy Spacek and all their kids as the typical hindrance to the hero’s devotion to the “right” thing to do. Watching now, I see Spacek as the real hero of the film, putting up with Costner’s crazy shit. If I ditched my wife on Easter and left her to take all the kids to a busy restaurant, I wouldn’t be here typing this nonsense right now. In this film, though, Costner just brushes it off to “not checking the calendar.” As if Tommy Lee Jones couldn’t wipe off the silver body paint and come into the office on another Sunday? Come on!

That’s the story of the film that gets lost in all the magic bullet and “back and to the left” (and realizing that Newman was in the magic bullet scene and the Keith Hernandez magic loogie scene in Seinfeld) stuff. Now I watch this and see the damage fully committing to a conspiracy theory can cause. The victory at the end of the film isn’t that the jury agreed a conspiracy existed and Costner brought about the only trial for it; it’s that Costner, even though he swears to keep fighting (but he doesn’t sound nearly as convincing as he did in his closing argument), walks away from the crowd with his wife and son. And now instead of reading a book or writing an essay (um…aside from this one just this one time) or going down a reddit rabbit hole, I walk away from it, too.

No Country for Old Men - "What You Got Ain't Nothing New."

I was a guest on my friend Robie Malcomson’s podcast, Knowing You Know Nothing, (click the link for the episode) this week to discuss No Country for Old Men. As usual, to prepare for the podcast I wrote an article before we recorded. So this article will be a bit more rambling than usual since it’s kind of serving as my notes for the podcast. But I think most of my stuff is rambling, so this article is probably just like all the rest...but with a bonus podcast you can check out.

“What You Got Ain’t Nothing New.”

No Country for Old Men is mainly about an aging lawman struggling to accept what the world has become. Of course, it’s not just people in law enforcement that struggle with the changing world; it’s all of us. For me, I remember it happening pretty early in a sports-related way. Whenever I went from one level to the next (like junior high to high school), I would think, “Man, they have it so much better than we had it.” It was essentially the “back in my day” bullshit we all grow up hearing. 

Things do change over time, but that doesn’t mean they are worse. If I checked game tape on basketball over the past few decades, the style of the play would be different, but not worse. A lot of this type of complaining is technology-based. As people age, they tend to prefer the more comfortable method they use for communicating and whatnot, so they’ll talk about the “simpler” times before everyone had a phone in their pocket.

Ed Tom in No Country certainly yearns for the simpler days of the past, as the film begins with his narration about how some sheriff’s didn’t even pack a gun. In his mind, the past was more peaceful, but now, with the drugs and everything, the world has become much more violent and confusing. It’s not until the end of the film that Ed Tom realizes that it’s not so much the world that has changed; it’s him. His uncle, Ellis, sums it up far better than I can: “What you got ain’t nothing new. This country’s hard on people. Can’t stop what’s coming. It ain’t all waiting on you. That’s vanity.”

Ed Tom finishes the film by recounting a dream he had about his long-dead father passing him on horseback and knowing that his father would be waiting for him ahead. I always thought that dream meant Ed Tom had accepted that he had aged beyond this world and felt comforted knowing that his father had gone through the same thing and would be waiting for him. His final line, “Then I woke up,” signifies that he’s at least aware of his situation now and has found a little peace in a hard world.

Accepting the chaos and Chigurhs of the world is something everyone throughout time could benefit from. When I was outlining this article, I thought I would focus on how crazy the world is right now and write about how this film can help someone realize that the world has always been crazy and chaotic. I still believe that, but I think focusing on that would defeat the point. It would assume that the world now is more chaotic than it’s ever been, and while that might seem like it’s the case, I can think of plenty of other historical events/time periods that would make the world feel less certain than it is today (the Holocaust, slavery, 9/11, JFK assassination, the Civil War, etc.). And I find it silly and disrespectful to try to compare horrible events to see which one is worse. 

Yes, learning the same lesson that Ed Tom learns in this film would be beneficial for a lot of people right now, but it would also be beneficial for a lot of people at any time in history. We all need to accept the title of the film and realize that this is not a country, or world, for old people. There are children growing up right now (my own two among them) that don’t see this current world as chaotic or different, even. This is just the world to them because this world is for them. Talk to them in twenty to thirty years, though, and they’ll probably tell you about how this chaotic world of ours right now is much simpler than the bullshit happening to their world in the future. And if I’m there to talk to them about it, I’ll just remind them of the lesson I took away from this movie: the world may change a bit, but people have and will always suck.

The Terminator, as Directed by the Coen Brothers.

It really hit me watching No Country this time how similar it is to The Terminator. The easy comparison is that Chigurh is machine-like and lethal like the Terminator and Llewelyn is the scrappy Kyle Reese, doing all he can survive.

There are certainly plenty of thematic differences between the films, but the long segments of tense cat-and-mouse interactions along with the scenes of preparation and self-surgery are spot-on Terminator. It makes for an interesting watch, seeing how the Coens would’ve made The Terminator.

As far as Chigurh as the Terminator goes, I actually think he’s a bit scarier because of his obsession with chance. It’s one thing to be a machine on a mission, but his strange coin flip game is a cruel addition. But then again, death in general is the same. Although I’ve never thought of Chigurh as a simple representative of death, but more as a personification of the brutal chaos of the world. In that way, Chigurh is more realistic. I can imagine someone like him existing, whereas the Terminator is more of a science fiction fantasy.

It’s pretty obvious, and plenty of others have made this comparison (as evidenced by the video below), but it stuck out to me a bit more this time for some reason.

Why Do I Own This?

I own almost every Coen Brothers movie (except Buster Scruggs [which seems silly to own since it’s a Netflix movie] and Hail, Caesar!, which has not grown on me enough yet. I used to be a completionist, which is why I own Intolerable Cruelty. All that written, I’d own this no matter who the filmmakers were. I believe this is easily in the top ten of the past twenty years.

Random Thoughts

I’ve seen this movie at least a dozen times, and this is the first time I noticed that Llewelyn’s first line is, “You hold still,” which is very similar to what Chigurh says to the unfortunate motorist in the previous scene. One is killing a man, the other is killing an animal. I suppose this film is asking if there’s a difference.

Gas station and grocery store scenes in period films always bother me because they rarely get the product packaging right. In this case, the Jack Link’s beef jerky in the background should not be there since the movie takes place in 1980 and Jack Link’s wasn’t founded until 1986. Not to mention that there’s no way the packaging looked like that in 1986. It’s a pet peeve that I wish I could ignore. Who else would let beef jerky take them out of such an amazing scene?

“Age will flatten a man.”

I love how the trailer park office lady says, “Did you not hear me?”

“You telling me he shot this boy in the head then went digging around in there with a pocketknife?”

“Sir, I don’t want to picture that.”

“I don’t either.”

Hotel clerk, incredulous: “That’s got two double beds!”

This is a movie largely comprised of scenes of preparation and tension. Come to think of it, that’s another reason why this movie reminds me of The Terminator more and more each time I watch it.

It’s also an all-time Coen Brothers film in regards to scenes with people working behind counters and desks.

“Is Carson Wells there?”

“Not in the sense that you mean.”

“They torture them first. Not sure why. Maybe the television set was broken.”

“But that’s what it took, you notice, to get someone’s attention. Digging graves in the backyard didn’t bring any.”

“Oh. That’s all right. I laugh myself sometimes. Ain’t a whole lot else you can do.”

“It’s certainly true that it’s a story.”

At first, I was annoyed that Llewelyn died off screen. Now I see that the shift in narrative focus is part of the point. People die and the focus drifts to the next person.

I was confused for a while about where exactly Chigurh is when Ed Tom goes back to the hotel. But you can see briefly that the lock to the next room has been shot out, as well. So I believe he’s waiting in the next hotel room and takes off while Ed Tom is looking through Llewelyn’s room.

“I always thought that when I got older, God would come into my life.” I’m not so certain now, but there was a time when I just thought older people were religious because they were old, and that’s what you do when you’re old, and that when I got older I would become much more religious. I’m not exactly old, so perhaps this will still be the case when/if I’m elderly.

The “vanity” line from Uncle Ellis really speaks to me. The idea that it’s vain to assume the world is at its worst during your lifetime is something I use to comfort myself from time to time. When I was little, I used to be very worried about the end of the world (the impending year 2000 was a point of concern for me for a while). Eventually, I came to the realization that this current generation of humanity is nothing special, so why should the world end while we’re here? It’s a bit of a messed up way to comfort yourself, sure, but it works for me. Why would the world end while we’re here? We suck too much for the apocalypse. An apocalypse would be wasted on us!

When I watched this in the theaters the first time, some dido behind me said, “Are you serious?” at the end. Yeah, they’re serious, you fucking moron. Look at the title. It’s called No Country for Old Men, not The Coen Brothers Made a Terminator Movie and That’s All. I hate to claim that someone doesn’t “get” something, but if you watched this movie and came away disappointed by the end, which encapsulates what the movie is actually about, then...you didn’t get it.

Here are a couple paragraphs of notes that didn’t make the cut for the first section, but I didn’t want to just delete them:

This is why we die. If we live too long, this world changes too much for us to handle. It happens sooner for some people. For simple folk like myself, I’m able to step away from it mentally and focus on other things, like parenting, video games, movies, work, etc. Life sometimes seems like one big distraction from the world.

But I don’t believe humans have become worse over time. We just know more things now. I imagine plenty of fucked up terrible shit happened even back in the cave dwelling days of humanity. But all we have to go by are some cave paintings of deer and shit. Now, we can just go back through someone’s Twitter history to find out how big of a piece of shit they are. We’ve always been awful, now we’re just better at letting everyone know, and, worse, a lot of people are proud of it.

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"Batman Forever" - "Holey Rusted Metal, Batman!"

SPOILERS ahead.

Joel Schumacher is generally credited with destroying Batman to the point that the series had to be rebooted and grounded in reality because he went so fucking crazy with Batman Forever and Batman & Robin. I am not a fan of Batman & Robin (though I don’t hate it as much as most people do), but I love Batman Forever. I blame nostalgia and the heyday of Jim Carrey for the most part. This movie came out when I was eleven, and I was all in. I watched it multiple times in the theater. “Kiss from a Rose” was easily my favorite song that year. I owned every collectible McDonald's glass from the tie-in. I even played the board game version of the film multiple times with a buddy who was equally obsessed with the film. Removed from that time period, I certainly see why this film is considered just as bad as Batman & Robin, but there’s a lot here I still sincerely enjoy. The romantic subplot is very interesting, the Batman is to blame for all this argument is pretty good, and, most importantly, it’s goofy as hell.

“Holey Rusted Metal, Batman!”

That cheesy in-joke made by Robin in this film could certainly be seen as the beginning of the end for this version of Batman, but I love it because it sets the tone of the film in the same realm of the Batman TV show I grew up watching (reruns, by the way, I’m not that old). That series was definitely tongue-in-cheek and part of me wants to see Batman being a bit goofy. But just like with all the other adaptations of Batman, I was always more interested in the villains than the Caped Crusader himself.

Villains in the old TV show were goofy as shit and seemed to be villains just to fuck with Batman. Sure, Two-Face and Riddler have legitimate issues with Batman and Bruce Wayne, respectively, but they basically exist just to torment him. And they enjoy doing it. I’m all for villains being compelling in modern comic book movies, but I also enjoy a good old-fashioned villain who’s just evil for evil’s sake. Riddler and Two-Face aren’t threatening and aren’t meant to be. It’s all supposed to be fun, and, at least for eleven-year-old me, it is.

Batman Forever isn’t meant to be taken seriously, which is why I enjoy it to this day. I get why people hate it, and I definitely find it to be one of the weakest Batman films, but that doesn’t mean it’s not enjoyable. I like watching Jim Carrey go absolutely insane as the Riddler, and I enjoy watching Tommy Lee Jones try to keep up with him even more. 

Just like the TV show, Batman Forever was meant to be a bit of fun. The new films can be as serious and award-winning as they want to be, but when I want to shut my brain off and embrace the goofy side of Batman, Batman Forever will be my go-to. 

Getting Cock-Blocked by Your Own Alter Ego

Another Batman movie, another love interest. With this iteration of Batman, he was kind of like James Bond in that new ladies showed up in each film and were simply gone by the next one. It was necessary due to casting and plot points, but it led to an interesting subplot for Forever.

Chase Meridian (what a fucking name) is the love interest this time around, but she’s torn between two men: Batman and Bruce Wayne. It’s not the focus of the film, and Chase ends up just kind of deciding to be with Bruce before figuring out he is Bruce Wayne, but it makes for a very interesting element: Bruce Wayne gets cock-blocked by his own alter ego. 

Usually, Bruce has to struggle with his secret with his lady friends because he wants to be honest with them. Here, the struggle is, “Should I just tell her I’m Batman so I can get laid?” (Hilariously, at one point in the film Bruce decides to quit being Batman, and part of the reason has to be so he can pursue Chase without the distraction of Batman.) It makes for some funny moments throughout the film. And it also makes you wonder: where did Chase think her pursuit of Batman was going to lead? Would he keep the mask on when they had sex? Would she have to use the Bat Signal every time she wanted to hook up? Could she handle him constantly blowing off dates to fight disfigured and crazed villains? Like most of the film, it hasn’t been seriously considered, which is why I find it so funny. 

Finally, a Reluctant Hero I Agree With

A common element in comic book movies that I cannot stand is the reluctant hero. Wolverine and Hulk come to mind as two guys with superpowers who just want to be left alone, but it seems to happen to nearly every character at some point. They want a regular life, or they lost someone, or they lose faith in humanity, or, in Batman’s case, they think everything is all their fault. Almost always they end up continuing to fight the good fight, and they learn they were right all along. They are the good guy, and they must always fight the bad guy for the sake of humanity. I find it to be an overused plot device, and it’s boring because we all know the hero is going to keep being a hero. But with Batman Forever, I feel differently. It really is all Batman’s fault.

It’s a common theme in the Batman mythology that Batman is just as crazy as his villains and/or they only exist because Batman is there. With Forever, the latter is definitely the case. Two-Face blames Batman for the attack that led to his new name. And the Riddler hates Bruce Wayne for not embracing his dangerous new technology. Batman realizes this and does decide to call it quits, but he jumps the gun a bit.

I’m all for this Batman giving up the crime-fighting because the two main villains feel the need to escalate their insanity to match Batman’s. Two-Face wrongfully blames Batman for the attack in the courtroom that led to his disfigurement, but perhaps he would have just been bitter for a while after the attack had he not had to witness Batman showing up all the time as Gotham’s savior. Eventually, he was bound to think, “Fuck this guy!” 

The Riddler was just pissed off with Bruce Wayne and seemed generally happy just to get back at him by being successful. But when he finds out Bruce is Batman he goes even crazier. Not to mention, he wouldn’t have become a villain without Two-Face’s existence, so it’s Batman’s fault too. 

So Batman should stop, but not while two maniacs are still running around terrorizing a city. He wants to just quit (and get with Chase, which might actually be his main motivator here) while both villains are at large. I get why he wants to quit, but he also needs to clean up the mess he created first. Not to mention, he’s cock-blocking (did not intend to use “cock-blocking” more than once in this article, but if the shoe fits…) Robin’s revenge plans. It’s okay for Batman to get revenge by killing the Joker, but when Robin wants to do the same thing, it’s “You don’t want this, man!” (And to top it off, Batman kills Two-Face right in front of Robin. What a dick!) 

Robin should be a lot more pissed off for a lot more of this film’s running time. Yeah, he blames Batman for his family’s death, but he gets over it pretty quickly. Hell, he has more of a right to become a villain than Two-Face does. Instead, Robin wants to do what Batman does. Hey Robin, here’s hoping you get someone’s family murdered some day too!

Batman obviously doesn’t stick with the retirement plan as his hand is forced by the villains he created. So he has to finish the job. Okay, so once he’s done the Two-Face and Riddler he can quit, right? No! Somehow the events of the movie have reaffirmed his resolve to be Batman. He feels more needed than ever! Why? Because he has made peace with his parents’ death (again)? All the more reason to stop dressing up like a fucking bat and inspiring psychopaths to meet your level, Bruce. 

I knew he wasn’t going to really quit, of course. After all, the movie is Batman Forever, not Batman Until He Gets over His Parents’ Deaths and Takes Care of Two-Face and Riddler and Also Gets with Chase Meridian. But this is the first time I’ve watched a reluctant hero and thought, “Yeah, you do need to quit this shit.” And if he had quit at the end, it could have ended the franchise for a bit. Instead, Batman deciding to keep fighting crime led to Batman & Robin. I think we can all agree Forever should have been the end. 

Why Do I Own This?

This was a pivotal movie for me in my childhood, so I like having it to revisit from time to time to see if I still like it as much as I used to. I still like it for all its goofiness, but I will admit that I'm not nearly as into it as I used to be. But how could I be? I was playing-the-board-game and playing-Kiss-from-a-Rose-on-the-jukebox-every-chance-I-got into this movie when it came out.

Random Thoughts 

Nicole Kidman took a "whispering is sexy" acting class before taking this role. 

So Batman was just hanging out in the courtroom in costume when Harvey Dent was attacked? 

This is what I miss about Batman movies these days: villain goofiness. Sure, they kill people and have motives, but they also enjoy stupid ass theatrics. I know the Joker was goofy a bit in The Dark Knight, but he was nowhere near as silly as Nicholson's Joker, and he's not even on the same radar as Two-Face and Riddler in this one. 

Thomas and Martha Wayne's murder has to be the most flash backed moment in cinema history.

Does Two-Face really eat raw donkey meat?

"Hey, Two-Face! Show me how to punch a guy!"

Robin doing extreme laundry is possibly the dumbest part of the franchise, and that's saying something. 

This movie predicted how stupid 3D TVs would be. 

It also predicted how we would willingly give up most of our personal information in the name of entertainment and/or distraction.

You have to appreciate a gang that makes good use of black light and glow sticks. They like to party...and rape.

When Batman shows up at Nygma's party, some fucking dildo yells out, "Batman! Yeah!"

I get that losing his parents has defined his life, but how is Bruce not coping with it better by the third film?

I just like how fucking giddy Two-Face and Riddler are to be evil.

God help me, but I like the "Holey rusted metal, Batman!" joke.

Tommy Lee Jones basically just makes a series of strange grunts and moans throughout the movie. It's a...strange performance. In his defense, he was going up against personification-of-cocaine Jim Carrey.

Why does destroying the green light thing make everything blow up? And how did Batman know that would work? It's just lazy.

And taking out Two-Face by throwing a few extra coins? They really phoned it in figuring out how to take out the villains with this one.

"Why can't I kill you?" What are you talking about? You stopped Two-Face from killing him two scenes earlier. Unless the question is more about why he couldn't let Two-Face kill him, then that's kind of interesting. Touché, Batman Forever.

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